I am absolutely, everyday, head over heels in love with my job and I’m more than happy to be known as “that girl who teaches yoga.” Now, I am confronted with the “essential transience” of all things. Who am I when I’m not being a yoga teacher? How will I be able to go back to my teaching practice? Will I be able to save money? All these questions and more are giving me pre-trip anxiety.

Random internet wandering, people inquiring about if I’ve heard of so and so product… and mostly, random internet wandering has led me to a new list of Filipino-made products for Filipino yogis, and yogis all over the world

At the end of each session, I usually give coaching clients an exercise or, if they’ve created an action point for themselves, I ask if they’d like me to hold them accountable for doing what they said they would do. Most say yes 🙂 One client went beyond a yes and even created a system on how I could hold him accountable exactly – which is what I’ll be sharing with you today.

Since then, I’ve actually adopted this awesome accountability system with other coaching clients and it’s worked beautifully so far. Perhaps it’ll work for you too.

Back when I was on the student’s side of the yoga classroom, teachers always seemed so impenetrable in their calm happiness, and sometimes even, otherworldly. Now that I’m a yoga teacher myself, I can tell you all with full confidence and honesty: we can be just as crazy, unhinged, insecure, uncool, basic, and normal as everyone else on the planet.

And you can bet the teachers in Manila have a lot of the Filipino quirks you can think of too 😉

In an attempt to demystify yoga teachers and the seeming perfection of their practice as seen through social media, I’m starting a series on my blog not-so-creatively entitled “Yoga Teachers of Manila.”

With grace and honesty, yoga teachers share with us their struggles, their funny “un-yogi” moments, and what keeps them on their mat as a teacher and as a student.

So thanks to this blog, I’ve had a lot of people reaching out to me about yoga, yoga teaching, and yoga teacher training 🙂

It’s so wonderful to hear from people… and to know that the love of yoga abounds.

Given the many people seeking answers to help them on their own journey, I’ve decided to write about what the journey has been like for me – in the practical sense. I often talk about my emotional, mental, and spiritual journey but not really about my career – so here it is. (READ: The Journey So Far)

Just a few things before I start though — these are my opinions and experiences and I can’t speak for all yoga teachers. I haven’t been teaching that long either so to be honest, I feel a little shy about sharing but hey – whatever helps 🙂 If you want a comprehensive view, maybe ask other teachers too. Maybe try the Yoga Teachers of Manila.

I’m also speaking as someone in the Philippine setting, Manila to be exact. Although I’m sure we yoga teachers share a lot of common experiences 🙂 The questions I will answer are just the few frequently asked ones so if you have more, do leave one in the comments.

“So, is life coaching like getting coached on a sport – except the sport is my life?”

This question may sound a little ditzy but whoever asks that is actually on to something.

To most of us, life coaching sounds like an awesome idea and, at the same time, a completely vague concept. What is it?

In its simplest form, life coaching is just a long conversation between two people where one person needs help figuring something out and the other person, your coach, commits to helping by being a sounding board, a truth teller, an advocate and, an accountability partner.

A coach is basically your go-to person for developing your own clarity, direction and, optimism. Through asking great, powerful questions, providing you structure and empowering you to create solutions, life coaches walk with you towards defining your dreams, achieving personal goals and, breaking through to the next level in your self-awareness and performance.

Still confusing? Yeah, I know right? When there are a whole lot of positive words just strung together, what they all actually mean can fly over our head. To keep us on the ground, just like coaches do, I’ve spoken to three people who’ve worked with life coaches before. They shared what they got from their conversations with a life coach.

Back when I was on the student’s side of the yoga classroom, teachers always seemed so impenetrable in their calm happiness, and sometimes even, otherworldly. Now that I’m a yoga teacher myself, I can tell you all with full confidence and honesty: we can be just as crazy, unhinged, insecure, uncool, basic, and normal as everyone else on the planet.

And you can bet the teachers in Manila have a lot of the Filipino quirks you can think of too 😉

In an attempt to demystify yoga teachers and the seeming perfection of their practice as seen through social media, I’m starting a series on my blog not-so-creatively entitled “Yoga Teachers of Manila.”

With grace and honesty, yoga teachers share with us their struggles, their funny “un-yogi” moments, and what keeps them on their mat as a teacher and as a student.

For this post, we get to know more about studio owner, yoga teacher, mom, and friend: Rach Bonifacio

Obviously, as you’ll see from the title of this post, I haven’t been a Life Coach for very long… which is precisely the reason why I just had to write this post.

I’ve only been a life coach for approximately six months and in that short time, I’ve learned so much about people, it’s insane. I have no ambitions of entertaining the idea that I’m expert, nor that I already know exactly what I’m doing either 😉 I’m just doing my best. I can say thought that I feel like very slowly but surely, my views on the world before me are changing.

So what have I learned as someone whose job it is to truly, actively listen to people? I’m so excited to share it with you.

On this episode of the #CoachYourself series, I’d like to share a great tool for beginning any kind of self-inquiry: The Wheel of Life ♥

I first encountered this exercise when I was a coach-in-training with The TLC Solution. On the very first day of our training, we were asked to fill out our own Wheel of Life and immediately, coach each other with that as a jump-off point! Things were happening too fast for me to even doubt if I could coach or not but blessedly, the Wheel of Life did around 60% of the work for me.

Let me explain how it works – then you’ll get why it’s such a great starting point for self-inquiry.

The last time I wrote something about crystals, sooo many people responded it to it well 🙂 I guess it means a lot of us are all finding a little something-something to support us in this journey, something grounding, something we can physically hold on to. (READ: 6 Sources Of Authentic Healing Crystals In The Philippines)

Since then, I’ve actually done my best to stop looking for crystals unless I absolutely need them – as there’s a difference between healing and hoarding 😉 So I’m happily surprised to see that since the last time I got a crystal for myself, there seems to be more people making art and beauty out of healing. I’m happy they exist and I’d like to share them with you.